COBI License: Cooperators meet Prabhu and Jayant

A renewed effort to secure license for the Cooperative Bank of India (COBI) is being made by the COBI leaders as in a short span of a week they have met two Union Ministers- Suresh Prabhu and Jayant Sinha.

COBI Chairman G H Amin came all the way from Ahmadabad to meet Union Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu seeking his support last week. Later this week efforts were repeated with a delegation of Chandra Pal Singh Yadav, Bijender Singh and B D Sharma visiting Jayant Sinha’s office. Amin was not present in this meeting.

Readers would note that earlier, Amin sought the company of NCUI President Chandra Pal Singh Yadav to meet the Union Railway Minister as Yadav is also on the Board of COBI. B D Sharma the promotional MD of COBI and an experienced cooperator also accompanied them.

“We met Prabhu as he was on the Board of COBI in the past and knows the benefits of having an apex cooperative bank”, said Amin while talking to Indian Cooperative at the NCUI headquarters. Prabhu’s staff asked me the reason for meeting and I told them that he is an old friend and my meeting is concerned with cooperative and cooperative alone, added Amin.

Prabhu talked to Finance Secretary before us and asked him to look into our representation. There are Primary co-op banks, district co-op banks and even state co-op banks but there is none at the national level, Amin reminded.

“The meeting with Jayant Sinha was also fruitful as Sinha insisted on working out the projections of COBI. He has given us some suggestions and we are working on that”, said Sharma to Indian Cooperative on the phone from Rajasthan.

The cooperative connection of Suresh Prabhu is being turned to good account by the COBI team. Besides being the Chairman of Saraswat Bank in the past Prabhu was earlier also on the board of NCUI.

COBI has everything except a banking license. It holds regular Board meetings, has AGMs and it also holds an international banking conference practically every year. This year the conference is slated to take place in Germany though its Chairman G H Amin said it is not final yet.

Last year it took a large delegation of Indian cooperators to Vietnam. As individuals we cannot meet the representatives of international banks so we hold such a meeting once a year to be able to exchange our ideas”, Amin says. He hastened to add that the cost is not borne by the COBI but by the participants themselves.